In gathering material for a study of Sir William Osler's influence on medical librarianship,1 I frequently ran across delightful accounts of Osler's son, Revere, and then sad references to his death as a soldier in Flanders and the oppressive grief it caused his parents. My purpose here is to tell this story.
Probably nothing else ever gave the Oslers so much satisfaction as the birth of Edward Revere Osler on Dec 28, 1895. This was during his father's Johns Hopkins period, and ten years before the Oslers left for Oxford, where Dr. Osler was to assume the Regius professorship in medicine.
As mentioned by Edith Gittings Reid,* all the Baltimore colleagues, students, and friends who so greatly enjoyed the company of Dr. and Mrs. Osier were properly appreciative of the new arrival. His parents' delight is preserved in a selection from a letter of the baby's mother—a descendant of